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Finally they turned their attention back to Emmett and
informed him that they would agree to try it out to see how it
worked on the following Saturday morning, which was only three
days away. " 'N you better make sure you got everything
covered, kid, 'cause we gotta pay our men overtime from the time
they show up at eight o'clock on Saturday morning to the time
they finish up. So don' you go fuckin' up, 'cause there's lots a
money we puttin' out to see this thing gets done right. So you
better do your best like us, see, or you're gonna have a lot to
answer to us for, if you fuck things up somehow. So, don't! It's
a good idea, but we don' wanna throw no money away for nothin'
you understand?! So, you make-a damn sure it counts front page!
Okay, you a good kid. Now, what you gettin' outta all this?"

Emmett told them a line about how he wanted to give everyone
on the Lower East Side a chance to live together in peace and
harmony without the filth of garbage that had accumulated because
of the city sanitation department's criminal neglect of the
neighborhood. It was exactly their criminal neglect which he
hoped to expose with the generous cooperation of the private
sanitation companies who were being wrongly slandered by those
same city hall officials.

Emmett shook all their hands before walking out into the crisp
evening air of Hester Street for his long but enthusiastic walk
back to the pad on Avenue A, thinking for a moment about the last
time he was on Hester Street and what he came there for then, and
also briefly wondering whether Willie Pondexteur was still in the
penitentiary at Dannemora, or paroled by now, or dead. It seemed
such a long time ago that Emmett hurried to push the thoughts of
that day out of his mind, thinking instead about how he had to
keep the upcoming Saturday cleanup very quiet, and at the same
time organize slick press coverage of the event.

But even though Emmett maintained tight security about the
project for Saturday, word of the cleanup by the private
sanitation companies got to the wrong people in the East Village
and they leaked it to the city government administration, who
flooded the Lower East Side neighborhood with their own
department of sanitation trucks on Friday, and copped all the
publicity for the city of New York. Several Puerto Rican
gangs--with whom Emmett had discussed the proposal he made to the
Elizabeth Street "good people"--were outraged by the
city's publicity stunt cleanup, after having always avoided their
community in the past. They printed [end page 337]